Duluth Police Department Awarded Grant to Help With Sex Crimes

Three Year Grant Is Worth More Than $400,000 and Will Help Partnership With PAVSA

DULUTH, Minn. – The Duluth Police Department was awarded a grant that will help them investigate sex crimes and work with PAVSA to help surviving victims.

The department received a three year competitive grant of more than $400,000 from the federal government. The grant will help the department provide aid for victims of sexual assault.

An additional sex crimes and child neglect investigator will be hired by the Police Department. The department will also use grant funds to provide more training materials for officers.

“We want to make sure that we have appropriate resources to be able to provide services for all of our victim survivors because these are extremely violent offenses and we want to make sure that we’re providing them the best possible services that we can,” said Lieutenant Dan Chicos of the Duluth Police Department’s Major Crimes Bureau.

The grant provides resources to the department to continue and expand their relationship with PAVSA. That organization will hire a new consultant to help with law enforcement collaboration.

“PAVSA has had a really good experience embedding advocates here at DPD and this will be our opportunity at PAVSA to hire a former law enforcement to help us on our end and that’s just important in creating a really respectful and understanding relationship,” said Mary Faulkner, Site Coordinator of the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative Grant.

Both PAVSA and police officials will review and update protocol to continue using best practices to help sexual assault victims.